Research initiatives in accounting education: Managing academic programs

This essay discusses select aspects of managing an academic program including quality and quantity of students and student recruitment, curricular development, measuring program quality and department performance, funding, and accreditation that affect the quality of accounting education. We include a broad overview of how the topics are interrelated and discuss observable output measures of program quality including CPA exam and other standardized test results, student placement, and longer-term measures of career success. We discuss select research to identify current knowledge and research related to managing an academic program. We also suggest unanswered research questions related to managing an academic program to encourage future research in this area. Many of these research questions are particularly important as accounting appears to be entering a period of declining enrollment and resources.